100 High Street

From Standish Wiki

by Keith Douglas

Many Standishers of a ‘certain age’ will remember with fondness Annie Park’s shop at the top of the Grove. Although the premise is at the apex of Church Street and Grove Lane, its correct postal address is 100 High Street.

Annie, whose married name was Worthington, ran the shop as a general purpose, genuine corner shop, having succeeded her mother Mary into the business. Both of them would be able to recount wonderful stories about regular customers coming to purchase all manner of goods.

But not as graphic or scurrilous, I’ll bet, as the stories told by Henry Parkinson in 1903 when he was licensee of a ‘beerhouse’ of the same address known as the Nag’s Head. Annie would tell of the downstairs lounge with a flagged floor, wooden seating around the walls and a small hatch from which was dispensed beer served directly from the barrel. It is difficult to establish how long the building served as a pub, but the Wigan Observer on 2 March 1892 reported as follows:

“At the Wheatsheaf Hotel on Monday night, Mr. George Wilcock offered for sale the beerhouse known as the Nag’s Head Inn, 100, High Street, and the two stone built cottages adjoining. The bidding began at £300 and rose rapidly until it reached £639 at which price it was knocked down”.

By 1921, the property had ceased to be a pub, as at a sale by public auction of parts of the Standish Estate, on Thursday 21st April, at the Court Room within the Urban District Council Offices, Standish, it was offered for sale as: “A compact house and drying ground, at 100 High St, with 2 front rooms, kitchen and pantry, 2 bedrooms and a large clubroom, currently let to Mr. Banks”. The purchaser and the price fetched are unknown, but the Wigan Directory of 1925 lists the property as being habited by Mrs Hilda Marrow, with a ‘mixed business’, but she was probably a tenant.

Annie’s parents, Robert and Mary, took over the lease about 1940 (although Robert worked as a miner), and in 1948 they purchased the premises from Mr. J.W. Harrison of Bolton for the grand sum of £600. Annie helped her mother in the shop from being very young until she eventually took over the business. From about 1973, although she continued to live there, the shop at the front was rented to a succession of different tenants, the last of whom traded as a children’s clothes shop and clothes exchange.

Sadly, Annie passed away in 2000, and her daughter, Mary, sold the shop to a local businessman.

And now, after extensive refurbishment including removal of the frightful rendering to reveal the original stonework, the building supports a new business based on weddings.

How things change!